Gastronomes no more, it seems wine and beer bloggers have something to cheer and cry over at the same time.

Starting this month (July 2009), Wikio, the news site, has decided to split its previous ranking of top “Gastronomy” blogs into separate food and wine & beer rankings. It means it will be easier to spot closely related blogs, but I must admit some fondness for the previous practice that helped to bring food & wine (& beer) blogs together where they should be (see a previous post here).

So, without further ado, here is advanced notice of the top 25 Wine & Beer blogs in the UK & Ireland for July, but remember to read on below for some thoughts and Wikio’s answers to some of my questions:

1 Spittoon 2 Brew Wales 3 Pete Brown’s Blog 4 jamie goode’s wine blog 5 The Wine Conversation 6 Stonch’s Beer Blog 7 Tandleman’s Beer Blog 8 Pencil & Spoon 9 Sour Grapes 10 Bubble Brothers 11 Bibendum Wine 12 Bordeaux-Undiscovered 13 Drinking Outside The Box 14 Bordoverview Blog 15 Tyson’s Beer Blog 16 Robert Francis Wine 17 Irish Wine Contemplations 18 Barry’s Wine Notes & Memories 19 Burgundy-Report 20 Taking the beard out of beer! Ranking by Wikio.

First to some initial thoughts & reactions:

• Wine 13: Beer 7 (not a bad balance)
• There are at least 3 “merchants” represented in this list. These businesses have achieved a respectable balance of selling their own products and providing interesting and useful content, making them amongst the top wine and beer blogs. Well done folks!
• Several of these blogs in wine and beer are written not just by enthusiasts, but by journalists and authors with traditional media credentials (Jamie Goode, Simon Woods, Peter Brown, Tandleman and Melissa Cole). The cross over to new media channels will hopefully be good for them, for the quality of content in the blogosphere and certainly for readers everywhere.
• Now that food blogs have been taken out, we are left with just one female voice in this ranking, Melissa Cole at Take the Beard out of Beer! (what’s wrong with beards anyway?). That seems a little unbalanced.

If you’ve any more thoughts on the table, do let me know. Congratulations to those who figure in this launch report.

A Wikio Q&A:

So, what do I make of it in general? I had a few questions going round my head, so I sent them to Wikio, and here are some answers:

Q1: What is the most important factor in assessing a blog’s “Ranking”? Traffic? Links? Subscribers? What sort of things should bloggers focus on to raise their profile?

For our ranking the position of a blog depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. We count dynamic links, which means backlinks or links found within articles. So blogrolls and the like are not taken into account. Also the weight of any given link increases according to how recently it was published. The weight of a link also depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking.

I must admit I think that link measures might be a little “self-serving”, indicating what other bloggers are reading, not what the readers are actually looking for, but I understand that as a machine-measures it works to some extent (it is important to Google for example).

In terms of raising your blog’s profile, therefore, it is more effective to be noticed by other bloggers, by leaving comments on their blogs, contacting them, working with them, etc. rather than employing traditional marketing techniques to build readership. Ultimately, if your content is good, I expect other bloggers will link to it anyway, but it does make you realise that ranking is still a schoolyard “popularity” contest to some extent.

Q2: How do you measure subscriber data? Is this not biased by including feeds to other networking sites (e.g. friendfeed)?

We do not measure subscriber data or traffic, just incoming links. We chose this as a means of measuring the most well-referenced blogs rather than necessarily the most widely read. Bloggers know the other blogs and discussions in their sphere of interest better than anyone, so a link from a fellow blogger is, we feel, a strong endorsement.

Again, it is a shame that ‘real’ indicators cannot be used for ranking. A blog’s subscribers and their loyalty over time, would be very strong measures of how ‘good’ a website really was at delivering value to its readers rather than how good it was at including content others might link to. However, I do prefer that it is not included until a reliable and accurate way is found to gather the same information for all blogs.

Q3: Does including a weighting for links from other top blogs not entrench a hierarchy and act as a barrier to new blogs?

Well it is not the case that a link from the blog in 4th place is worth more than the one in 5th place. Just that one from a blog in the Top 100 is worth more than one from 101st - 1000th. So the degree to which this affects the rankings is actually quite low, and is more intended to combat spam at the lower end.

The idea behind this more general principle is just that blogs that are higher up are generally more active and are more likely to have a better acquaintance with the subject matter, so they are more likely to link to things that are worthwhile. But as I said in practice this weighting does not make a huge difference and is actually pretty light. And it only takes effect on the first 100, then the next 900, then the next 9000 blogs etc.

What is more important and accorded a more calculated weighting is how recent an incoming link is.

I understand the need to filter out the spammers and aggregators. I still think that valuing a link from a subset of blogs creates an in-crowd that does work, in some way, to keep others out, but if the weighting is low, I suppose the overall effect will be minimal. I’d also like to see how well that system works as I have found sites like technorati to offer questionable statistics these days that vary from one week to the next.

Q4: Who really cares about rankings? Does it add value for bloggers or readers, or just drive even more traffic to those who are already successful? Is this just about vanity for bloggers?

The aim of the rankings is more just to provide an easy way for people to find quality blogs on a given subject. But of course we’re happy if people take pride in their position

Q5: What innovations does Wikio offer, or plan to offer, that would engage bloggers in these rankings - or is this just reporting and should we just get on with our blogging?

In fact, we are aiming to introduce a new feature so I’m glad you ask this! We would like to introduce expert bloggers in each field to help us enrich and maintain the rankings (and hopefully launch more new ones, too). We have just published something about this on our blog: http://blog.wikio.com/uk/2009/07/wikios-experts.html

We’d like anyone who is interested to contact us on info AT wikio DOT co DOT uk

I’m sure I missed lots of questions, but if you have any of your own, let me know and I’ll pass them on.

So, if nothing else, I urge you to not just read but to include links to your favourite blogs in your next posts, particularly to help support those who are starting out and are not yet in the top 100.

Of course, links back to this post would be MOST appreciated too

I thought you might find this both interesting and amusing.

I took part in a tasting of 75 wines with Charles Metcalfe (aka @thewinesinger) last week. During the day I took some video on my new iPhone 3GS (yes, playing around). I’ll publish the serious interviews soon, but this is Charles tasting wine 60 (or more) of over 75.

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Wine and Tech will be (I hope) a series of short posts on using some new technology to support the wine conversation

I have recently come across a number of innovations that are not directly related to wine, but which got me thinking about how they might be used to do fun, useful and social stuff with wine. I thought I would share some of these with you and see if they sparked ideas for you like the have done for me.

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How good is your memory? Mine is awful. I’m pretty good with faces, but names are “gone in 60 seconds” (or less). In fact it is the same with wine. Some people can remember what a wine tasted like in previous vintages and minutely compare them from memory. Not me. So I was very excited to learn about EverNote.

EverNote bills itself as the way to “remember everything”. Essentially what it does it take your photos, documents, audio messages and more and not only store them, but index them so you can search and find them later. That isn’t revolutionary on its own, but you need to know that EverNote actually “reads” all the text in the pictures (yes, even the photos) and so you can search for the word in the picture, not just the name of the photo. How cool is that?

What does this have to do with wine? Well, it has always been difficult to capture all the necessary information from a label when you are tasting, especially if in fact you are in a restaurant or bar and not a formal wine event. It is so easy to taste something wonderful and promise yourself that you’ll remember it when you get home … and invariably you don’t. Now, a quick, subtle photo will suffice AND it will be easy to search for again even if you don’t remember much about it in future.

Again, this is quite useful for wine lovers who want to catalogue the causes of their inebriation, but how is this relevant to the wider consumer and the wine conversation?

What I love about the idea is that it allows the average consumer with a mobile phone & camera (and a data plan that allows upload to the web), to record their wine experiences and share them in a useful, searchable and standardised way WITHOUT having to join wine social networks. There are no tasting notes, unless they want to include them, and there is no need to even understand how to read the wine label. A photo, plus a tag such as “buy again” or “hated this” is enough.

Of course the system is much more powerful than I’ve described it, adding GPS codes, matching images etc, but you can explore that if you are keen.

I’m already playing with this and wondering how it might be useful to wine drinkers, so if you have any thoughts, or you use EverNote too, please let me know.

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I just spent an enjoyable afternoon learning about “Natural” wines with Kathryn O’Mara of Artisan & Vine and in the pleasant company of Denise Medrano (aka The Wine Sleuth) and Andrew Barrow (of Spittoon.biz).

Natural wine, according to Kathryn, are ones truly ‘made in the vineyard’. Whilst many winemakers might make this claim, Kathryn has selected wines that take this to the extreme. Kathryn’s challenge was to dedicate her wine bar to selling wine with a truly unique story and a dedication to their source.

Artisan & Vine’s wine list is made up almost entirely with wines that are organic or biodynamic, made in small volumes, with indigenous yeasts, many would no sulfur added (others with the smallest amount at bottling), and all of them by winemakers who she feels really believe in making the best wines possible.

If that is gobbledygook to you, don’t worry, it is for most people, including the wine trade. Essentially, these are wines made with the minimum of “extra” anything - just crushed grapes and nature. Most wines, like any other product, are made with certain additives that help to control the process and ensure a consistent outcome. That’s good for the consumer (you get ‘proper’ wines every time) and the winery (they ensure they have wines to sell). However, there are some who feel that this changes the wine and that if you want to taste the real flavours of the grape, the region and of nature, then you must limit ANY manipulation. In general, that’s just bonkers (we’d never have enough wine of an acceptable quality).

However, whilst one can argue the case for wineries in general to be more consumer-focused and aware of wine drinkers preferences around the world, the world would be a poorer place without dedicated mavericks challenging those tastes and broadening our experiences. So it is with wine bars.

The highlights of the tasting for me were the rich Pouilly-Vinzelles, La Soufrandiere 2006 (a Chardonnay from Burgundy), and Clos Milan 2001 from Baux de Provence (a blend of Grenache and Syrah). What amazed me was the concentration of the flavours, yet a very clean finish. Maybe there is something to this ‘natural’ wine after all?

The other wines were also full of personality, amazingly different, and really made me want to explore them further. These were highly unusual wines, such as the Tir a Blanc, Le Casol de Mailloles (which reminded me of wild flowers and cider) and the Contadino #5 (ripe berry flavours, smoky, pungent and something distinctly ‘volcanic’ - it is grown on Mount Etna). Whilst I may not recommend these to everyone, they are something you need to try if you like wine and want to expand your horizons.

That is what I look for in a wine list.

The pricing is fair, though not necessarily cheap, with reasonable mark ups for better quality wines. I encourage you to make the trip to St. John’s Hill, Clapham, SW11 and explore them yourself.

So, …

Q: Do I think most wine drinkers care whether their wine is “Natural”?

A: No!

Q: Do I think most wine drinkers care whether they buy wines from passionate people, made by people who are truly committed to their wines?

A: Yes!

Is there something intrinsically “Italian” about a website built in Italy like there is something uniquely Italian about the country’s wines (beyond the obvious language issue of course)?

I don’t think so. However, there might be something uniquely Italian about how a problem is addressed and solved. For example, I’m attending a “wine” conference in Genoa, and amongst the 20 or so speakers at yesterday’s “unconference” were two olive oil producers and a producer of wonderful balsamic vinegar - all talking about the same issues of building their brand, sharing their personality and delivering expert content using the web. Who knows, maybe this cross-fertilisation of ideas might bring new insights or opportunities?

This is the sort of “outside the box” thinking and discussion we hope will emerge from bringing together bloggers who have an interest in wine, including food, travel and maybe other bloggers, at the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference (EWBC). Maybe it will be the Italian balsamic vinegar, or the Spanish wine tourism or maybe the Portuguese designer that will spark the discussion that will lead to a new approach to sharing wine online. Who knows!?

In the meantime, I must say I’ve been reminded of, and impressed by, the range of wines made in Italy, but which are so hard to find outside of it. It is a shame it is so hard to find wines such as the indigenous Pigato, Ciliegiolo, Cesanese and Cannonau - instead of the ubiquitous Pinot Grigio (does anyone know of a great resource on Italian grapes to link to?). I urge you to explore these further.

And on that note, I’m off to taste more wines from 125 producers at TerroirVino. A presto!

On Wednesday I was invited to taste through a small range of examples of 2008 vintage Chablis with Arnaud Valour of the Burgundy Wine Board. Naturally I accepted - and it had nothing to do with the branded gifts I took away (although I’m particularly grateful for a copy of Rosemary George’s wonderful book; The Wines of Chablis)

I’d say that the wines were great, but they were only a selection of 6 bottles (blind - i.e. without saying which they were) and chosen to be the best of the region in this vintage, so you’d expect them to be. I was particularly impressed by the quality and easier drinking style of the Petit Chablis wines - they had more character than I really expected. For those unfamiliar with the Chablis hierarchy, this is:

• Petit Chablis - the least expensive, simple, crisp wines
• Chablis - a range of wines, but fresh, delicate and with hints of “minerality” (like the aroma of shells on the beach - see video)
• Chablis Premier Cru (or 1er Cru) - more complex wines that must come from only 40 or so vineyards
• Chablis Grand Cru - the most intense, age-worthy and usually stunning examples; only 7 vineyards on one slope go to making these

I asked Arnaud what he though were the unique style characteristics of Chablis, and why people should chose Chablis, and I recorded the answer (I apologise for the poor quality sound):

Of course, the wines got better as we went up the scale, getting more rounded, more complex and showing those classic Chablis characters. It does seem that 2008 will be a good vintage for the region. It also seems that sales of this premium region are as affected by the credit crunch as everyone else, so you may be able to pick them up for a decent price when they hit the shops and merchants.

For the premier cru wines (I tried an interesting organic 1er cru) and above, it would be a crime to drink a 2008 now as they’ll develop over the next decade, but the trouble will be finding someone who will keep them for you, so it might be worth getting a few and keeping them in a cool corner for a future special occasion.

Chablis Online

But this blog isn’t about tasting wines or about specific regions. I also spent a while asking Arnaud about the online marketing and social media plans of the Chablis region. After all, Chablis already has brand recognition around the world, you would think it could leverage this to its advantage online too.

It seems that there are plans to launch a new site at http://www.chablis.fr - I see there is a site there now, but it has numerous flaws, so I’m hoping it is a work in progress. Considering how controversial internet marketing of alcohol is in France these days, it is good to see that not everyone is abandoning these efforts. Apparently Chablis is out to broaden its appeal to “women and younger consumers”, mainly, it appears, through tasting events in Chablis itself. For the rest of us, the plan is to focus on the wine trade. Unfortunately the wine trade is already familiar with the wines, and with hundreds of regions competing for their attention, I wonder how effective this will be (it got me writing about it I suppose). I was specifically told they had no plans for Facebook fan pages, blogs or twitter accounts, which unfortunately fits the stereotype of French wine marketing.

Arnaud himself was very articulate, friendly and spoke excellent English, but there are only so many people he can meet in person. Surely they could find a way to “amplify” his message through social media channels easily enough?

In short, Chablis continues to be a great wine, it continues to be a reasonably expensive wine, and it doesn’t have much new to say about itself from a marketing perspective, so continues to speak to the same consumers. If you buy it, you’ll probably keep doing so. If you don’t, what reason have you to start?

Question: What does Chablis mean to you?

I wonder if I could urge you to go and taste a bottle of Chablis, any style, any vintage, and let me know what you think of it? How did you find the wine? Did you like it? Was it good value for money? How was it being sold compared to the competition? If you would consider undertaking this mission, please do let me know what you thought here in the comments.

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This weekend I will be heading off to Genoa (or Genova as our hosts call it) to attend TerroirVino.

TerroirVino is the creation of my friend Filippo Ronco, who has also established one of Italy’s premier wine resources, TigullioVino. I met Filippo when he attended last year’s European Wine Bloggers’ Conference and I was very impressed by his determination to create a whole series of tools for wine lovers and publishers. His business also covers an advertising network for bloggers and the Vinix wine social network.

TerroirVino is a conference and tasting. On Sunday I will be taking part in Vinix Unplugged, an unconference to discuss wine, food and marketing online. I will be on at 15:00 (I think) to present the 2009 EWBC (European Wine Bloggers Conference) and some of this may be streamed live here. Monday promises a wonderful array of top Italian wines as there are 125 exhibitors pouring their wines in the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. Expect a few tweets and twitpics from me to make you all jealous.

I hope to let you know what exciting things are happening in Italy that might have an impact beyond that country, and hopefully also meet some of the marvellous range of Italian wine bloggers attending the event. Most of all, I look forward to sharing information about the 2009 EWBC with everyone.

If you are coming to the conference or tasting, please say hello - or even Ciao!

A presto amici!

Here’s an idea for wine brands - it’s free, or should I say “there is no charge attached”

As the BBC pointed out yesterday, people in Britain consider Broadband at home “essential”, like water or electricity. I agree. I’d also add, that the next move will be to demand it outside the home too, so they can continue their daily business - work, shopping and conversations, on their mobile devices.

There are more and more hotels, bars and restaurants are offering Wi-Fi (although hotels try to charge for it which is just wrong!) which is a great idea - although few are using this properly to their advantage (I’ll post on that as well soon). But as this becomes more common, it will lose its power to impress. Once it is expected, it will only be an issue if it is NOT available.

What no-one has yet done in the restaurant trade (to my knowledge) is address a major shortcoming of all this mobile interaction - access to POWER. CHARGE. ELECTRICITY.

A customer could easily walk into a bar with any combination of laptop, iPod, mobile phone, camera or games console. Want to be their friend for ever? Offer them access to power points (or should I say sockets). The clever bar manager will also have a set of chargers for the most common tools & brands (iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, PSP, etc.) available which customers can borrow FREE.

There have been many times I could have been sharing my experiences of the food, wine, and the location but I couldn’t for fear of running out of battery (in my vocabulary for obvious reasons this is now called “twitter juice“). You should have seen the look I got when I asked recently if they happened to have a charger.

If you are a wine brand with ANY form of online presence, why not brand these tools and make them available instead of just sending out more ice-buckets or menu covers?

I’ve even got a name for the branding campaign - “No Charge”

Just a thought. If you do something like this, let me know!

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I tried a very brief experiment today.

I was off to The Wine Theatre in Southwark for lunch to meet a fellow blogger, Oliver Thring of Thring for your Supper. As I had not tried the restaurant before, but it billed itself as a wine destination, I was hopeful that there would be interesting wines to try. They have their food and wine menu available online (I can’t believe all restaurants do not do this automatically), so it was easier to prepare.

Rather than choosing the wine myself, I opened up the choice to my followers on twitter and “crowdsourced” the choice - hoping they would be inventive, creative … and kind (and not force me to choose the most expensive wines). I’m a little busy with other tasks at the moment so I wasn’t able to encourage lots of participation, but one follower (@philippav) did respond with some excellent suggestions, and mostly ones I would not have made myself.

The result was that we ended up sharing a bottle (I know, it was supposed to be a glass, but we did have starters AND mains) of a Barbera d’Asti 2007 called Teis from Ca’Bianca - a lovely, light bodied and fruity wine (though with great Italian acidity) that matched the mood and conversation perfectly (though you’ll need to read Oliver’s review to see how it matched the food).

I wonder whether this is an interesting challenge for future outings; to allow certain choices in my vinous exploration to be dictated by a group of like-minded individuals and thus encourage greater experimentation - a little like “Yes Man” (but with wine, and more style - not that I’ve seen the film, but I somehow doubt I need to bother based on the cast and the trailer)

Based on today’s results, it is at least worth repeating, but maybe with a little trepidation

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I think this must be my third, or possibly fourth, London Wine Trade Fair (LIWF) since I started writing this blog. As a “Trade Only” show, it might not be of interest to many of you, so I don’t talk about it much unless I come across an interesting story or two. This year might be a little different.

The main reason is that the European Wine Bloggers Conference for 2009 has been announced, and the interest in it is such that Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from Catavino.net (my fellow organisers) and I have been invited to talk about the intersection of the wine business and Social Media. We will be speaking in one of the London Wine Trade Fair’s official ‘Briefing’ slots, on Wednesday the 13th of May at 13:00. Our topic is: “Wine and the Web: the Business of Getting Social“. I look forward to sharing a platform with Ryan Opaz and Dan Coward from Bibendum who are sponsoring this talk.

If you are in the wine trade and you can make it on Wednesday, come along to the talk (RSVP here) - we already have lots of wineries, agents, importers, PR and journalists coming along but there is still space left. We want to keep a good proportion of the time for questions, so come prepared, we’ll try to do the same!

The other exciting news from the London Wine Trade Fair this year is that they have begun to recognise wine bloggers as “Press” just as they do for journalists from traditional media. You get a Press badge, access to the Press Centre, WiFi, and a seat! You do have to have some track record of writing about wine on your blog to qualify, which I think that’s fair (I can imagine there are a lot of people who’d like to be able to come along to the biggest wine tasting in the UK), but otherwise, they are keen to give bloggers access to the world’s top wines. If you are not already on the list and you want to know more, leave me a comment here or email me (thirstforwine AT gmail DOT com) and I’ll pass on the details.

If you read this blog you will find me either on Bibendum’s stand (D30) or on the EWBC booth which has been generously organised by ViniPortugal on their stand (B20).

I’ll certainly be sending some thoughts and pictures from the show floor on twitter. If you want to check it out, make sure you follow me on twitter (I’m @thirstforwine)

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